11:13 <notwas> hello

16:35 <notwas> fun ref shift(): A^ ? can somebody please explain this return type? Is there some documentation available somewhere?

16:38 <SeanTAllen> the A is from the generic

16:38 <SeanTAllen> I assume you are refering to the ^, is that correct notwas ?

16:38 <SeanTAllen> if you check the symbol cheatsheet in the tutorial: https://tutorial.ponylang.org/appendices/symbol-lookup-cheatsheet.html

16:38 <SeanTAllen> you'll see it says to search for "Ephemeral"

16:39 <SeanTAllen> which leads you to "Aliasing": https://tutorial.ponylang.org/capabilities/aliasing.html

16:39 <SeanTAllen> the symbol cheatsheet can help for things like that

16:41 <SeanTAllen> The ^ means its ephemeral. This is important with `trn` and `iso` types. If you generic type was "Foo iso" then without that ^, your return type would be an alias to an `iso` which isn't something you can use.

17:48 <notwas> @SeanTallen: thanks alot for this explanations.

17:51 <notwas> After reading the section about aliasing, I fear it will take a longer time until I not only understand this concepts but also actually use them

17:55 <notwas> In the meantime I'd like to learn ponylang simply as a general purpose language. So it would be nice to have more reading material as how to use ponylang as your everyday practical programming language.

17:56 <notwas> For one, it would be nice to have some more documentation about collections.

18:33 <SeanTAllen> Safely sharing data (aka refcaps and aliasing) are at the core of Pony so you can't avoid it. Its a matter of getting used to thinking about those problems, designing your applications accordingly and then figuring out what the compiler is telling you. For some people, it comes pretty quick and natural, for others it takes a lot more time.

18:33 <SeanTAllen> notwas: What does "simple as a general purpose language" mean?

20:09 <jemc> notwas: have you seen the `examples` directory in the ponyc repo?

20:09 <jemc> it contains small easy-to-digest example programs to demonstrate some simple concepts or solve simple problems

20:11 <jemc> regarding the `^` notation (known lovingly as "hat") - doublec has a very good blog post on the subject called "Bang, Hat, and Arrow in Pony" https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2016/05/04/bang-hat-and-arrow-in-pony.html

20:12 <jemc> understanding how generics are implemented ends up being one of the more advanced topics in Pony, but using generics (like collections) is much simpler and doesn't necessarily require you to understand the inner workings og generics